A Tale of the Five Hundred Kingdoms, Volume 2

by Mercedes Lackey

  Adamant’s eyes glinted dangerously. “Then it would not matter what we did to the castle and its inhabitants in the course of fighting him. We would not need to restrain ourselves in the least.” He flexed his talons, tearing up the ground, and Gina did likewise.

  “Exactly.” He wondered, could he be persuasive enough? “If we can find the cave I tumbled into, I’m sure I can get inside. Then it will be a matter of talk.”

  “What about the door you left by?” Adamant wondered. “That would be easier to find.” They both gazed out at the mountain, blue in the distance, pondering all the possible ways to get inside.

  But Gina just snorted. “Men. Why should you go hunting? They will come to us.”

  Sasha blinked. “Ah…how?”

  She laughed, a deep rumble in her chest. “Trust me. If two dragons show up on her mountain, the Queen will certainly send someone to find out why. Being that she seems to be relatively peaceful by nature, I suspect that would be an envoy rather than an army.”

  Sasha and Adamant looked at each other and Sasha grinned wryly. “Gina is another female, and probably knows better than we do how the Queen would think,” Sasha pointed out.

  “Aye. And that being so, why don’t we just go?”

  So it was another flight by dragon back, another terror-filled takeoff and landing, and then Sasha found himself with two dragons at his side, admiring the view on the eastern side of the mountain. He thought he was probably quite near the door he had left by. The stretch of gravel-laden slope seemed about right, as did the nearness to the tree line.

  “I could get very fond of this view,” Adamant said meditatively. “Very fond.”

  A heavy sigh greeted his words. As one, the three of them turned to see a green-skinned man in elaborate silk robes regarding them with a dubious expression. “I certainly hope you don’t plan—”

  And then he stopped, and peered at Sasha.

  “Prince?” he said, in an entirely different tone of voice. “I hope there is no—dissatisfaction involved in having you and your—friends—here?”

  “Not at all,” he replied, stepping forward from between the two dragons. “I just needed to get your attention quickly, so I asked them to come along. You must admit, they are rather—”

  “Prominent?” the adviser suggested. “I would not say ‘threatening,’ of course—”

  Sasha widened his eyes. “I absolutely pledge you on my honor and soul, there is and was no threat intended. But I did need to speak with the Queen and not have to wait about hoping someone would let me in. If I may, I really, truly, do need to speak to Her Majesty on a matter of terrible importance.”

  The adviser eyed him, and evidently decided that Sasha was serious. And that it was a matter of urgency. “In that case, please come inside.” He eyed the dragons. “Do you wish your—friends—”

  “Oh no, Prince Sasha can speak for all of us,” Gina said cheerfully. “We’ll just continue to enjoy the view.”

  CHAPTER 16

  The Queen of the Copper Mountain was just as stunning as he remembered her. She wore a different sort of gown today, one that seemed to be made of a pale green silk, cut like a chemise with long flowing sleeves, and it provided the backdrop for a kind of gold-and-malachite collar that covered her shoulders and chest, with a matching belt that encircled her hips and depended to the floor. “You didn’t find your wandering lady?” the Queen asked, with just a touch of a smirk.

  “Actually I sort of did, and that is why I need to speak with you, Majesty,” Sasha replied earnestly.

  They were not in an Audience Chamber, nor a Throne Room. This was a very different sort of room altogether, but it was one that displayed the wealth and skill of the people of her Kingdom as nothing Sasha had seen before.

  Sasha had gotten the impression that one never saw the sun in the Queen’s little Kingdom.

  He had been wrong.

  They were in a fascinating chamber hollowed out in the very peak of Copper Mountain. The floor was paved with malachite tiles; the furnishings were all malachite as well—two low, padded chairs, a tiny table between them, and a very long table behind them. Most of one wall was a single glass window, the likes of which Sasha had never seen. It was clear, flawless and all a single piece. He could hardly imagine how it could have been made without magic. All of the glass windows he had ever seen were made of thick, wavy glass, full of bubbles and imperfections. This was as clear as air.

  And the view was amazing.

  They sat, not facing one another, but side by side facing the window, with that tiny malachite table between them. Behind them was a servant at a samovar at the larger table. On the smaller table, within easy reach of either of them, were delicate teacups and plates of tea cakes.

  “So did the lady reject you?” the Queen asked, nibbling a cake, as an eagle flew past at eye-level.

  He shook his head. “Nothing of the sort, Majesty. No, the lady is held captive, with several others, in the Castle of the Katschei.”

  She paused, tea cake halfway to her lips. She set it down. “The Katschei is dead,” she said flatly.

  “But something else is in his Castle.” Sasha contemplated the view, then leaned forward a little. Yes, if he leaned forward, he could just see the edge of a zone of pale yellow. “I think you know that, Majesty.”

  She nibbled the cake, but it had clearly lost her interest. “Hmm, yes. I believe I was informed. Overtures to trade were met with silence, so I shall not trouble myself with what is there now.”

  “Perhaps you should look more closely, Majesty,” Sasha said, getting to his feet and walking over to the window. Yes, there it was, a smear along the edge of the view, a haze of dust above it, marring the cerulean-blue of the sky, a blot of arid, alien color bespeaking death and desolation amid the greens and blue-greens of the wilderness. “What is there has changed the landscape.”

  She waved a hand dismissively. “It does not belong there. The Tradition will arrange for it to be taken away.”

  “Perhaps. Or perhaps The Tradition will be changed.” He continued to stare at the Jinn’s desert. “The Tradition has been changed before, and it can be again. Do you know what is there?”

  Silence for a moment. “Personally? No….”

  “It is called, I believe, a Jinn.”

  She murmured something to the attendant. Sasha continued to stand, staring out of the window, as the attendant left, then returned. He turned back to see that there was now a fourth person in the room, a fellow with the bent-shouldered look of a scholar about him. The Queen looked to Sasha. “What did you call the creature again?” she asked.

  “A Jinn,” Sasha repeated.

  At a look from the Queen, the newcomer cleared his throat. “A Jinn, Majesty, is a being said to be born of fire. Although physical, it is not, and never has been, human. My sources are mixed as to whether it is or is not mortal. It cannot abide water or many green things, finding its home in the desert. In some ways, it acts very mortal, having dwellings, marrying, begetting children. There are said to be two sorts, the lawless and the law-abiding. The latter dwell in the City of Brass, in the Kingdom of the Empty Quarter, so called because it is all desert. The former may be anywhere in the lands surrounding that Kingdom.” With a significant glance at Sasha, he continued. “It is, I believe, those with which we are concerned. The Lawless Jinni acknowledge neither master nor ruler, nor abide by any laws, and seldom make alliances even with their own kind. Each seeks to create a Kingdom of his own, accumulate power, and eventually, to overwhelm and enslave all Jinni it encounters, turning the land to desert and slaying or capturing all that are not Jinni. Being powerful magicians, and able to accrete power by extracting it from others, they have little or no use for the items most other beings consider valuable. Wealth they count only in terms of power. Art gives them no joy. They are immune to most feelings.”

  “That,” Sasha said into the silence, “is probably why the Jinn rejected trade with your Kingdom, Majesty.”
r />   The scholar nodded cautiously.

  The Queen looked just the faintest bit irritated. “Then let him sit there in splendid isolation. If he has no need of what I can offer, then I have no need of him.”

  Sasha scratched his head. “There’s a bit of a problem with that, Majesty. You see, he isn’t satisfied with just having what he has. By his very nature he wants everything. In fact, unless I’m very much mistaken, you’ll find his patch of desert has been growing since he arrived.”

  Again the Queen sent a sharp glance toward her scholarly adviser, who nodded reluctantly. “It has doubled in size, Majesty.”

  “The Tradition makes him do what the Katschei did—hold lovely young women captive. But he’s using that, using The Tradition against itself. He needs more magic than he has just in himself, and The Tradition makes it easy for him to abduct young women—so he abducts only those that have power, either inherent or because they are naturally creatures of magic.” He grimaced. “Like my betrothed, except that she allowed herself to be taken on her father’s orders to find out what had happened to a missing swan maiden. The message she got out to us said there were several more captives in the Castle and if I were to venture a guess, I would say that every time he takes a girl, his desert gets a little bigger.”

  The Queen bit her lip and narrowed her eyes. “I do not see what this has to do with me,” she replied.

  Sasha paused while he sorted through possible answers. “Well…for one thing, you are going to lose your trading partners. Nothing can live in that desert but him. Sooner or later, everyone you’ve traded with will be gone as his desert eats what used to be their lands.”

  The glance that the Queen sent toward the scholar was like a spear now. He coughed. “We, ah, already have, Majesty. The Leshii of Mosswood, the Shaman of the Cave of the Bones, and the Firebird of Aen Jar. The Firebird fled,” he added. “We do not know what the fates of the Leshii and the Shaman are.”

  The Queen’s darkening expression did not bode well for those who had failed to call her attention to this. “I have no intention of going to war against this Jinn,” she said ominously.

  Sasha put on an earnest expression. “That shouldn’t be needed, Majesty. There are Champions—my two dragon friends—who are going to attempt to take him. But this is where we do need your help. We need him weakened, we need to get the Sea King’s daughter out to help us, and the only way we can do that is if we get his hostages out of his hands.” He looked at her expectantly. “Without those young women to draw on, his power may well be halved.”

  She drummed her fingers on the arm of her chair. “You have a plan.”

  “We have one that requires your help, yes, Majesty.” He licked his lips, and hoped he didn’t look as nervous as he felt. “I told my friends that I would be very surprised if you had not had tunnels driven well into the Katschei’s grounds. For trading purposes. As is your right.”

  “What of it?” she asked. “This Jinn knows nothing of them. We approached his gates rather than reveal our secrets.”

  “All the better, Majesty.” He smiled weakly. “You see, I am fairly certain that the Jinn does not know of these tunnels, and he will be looking to the surface of the land or to the sky for any attempts at escape. If you were to drive those tunnels further, into his dungeon, we could free the hostages and weaken him by removing them from this source of power.”

  She sat in silence a while. “I will think on this. I must speak with my advisers. Stay here.”

  He bowed. She rose to her feet and swept out, pale green gown and long sleeves trailing after her, jewels chiming softly.

  “Tea, sir?” asked the attendant. “And perhaps something more substantial than cake.”

  Sasha sat down, feeling very weak in the knees. He could scarcely believe he had managed to get this far. Matching wits with the Queen made him feel like a man with a knife facing a man with a sword. “That would be welcome, yes.”

  The attendant took away the cakes and placed buttered bread, cold beef, and pickles beside him. With a sigh of appreciation, Sasha helped himself. The view from that window was tremendous, and he had no doubt, had helped his case. She could see with her own eyes how the Jinn was encroaching on Copper Mountain. And being underground probably would not save her and her people if he decided he wanted what she had.

  It wasn’t as if the Jinn would know how the girls escaped, either, not if she was clever and he and the dragons were fast enough. If her people collapsed the tunnels behind the girls, the Jinn would never know who had driven them. And if Sasha and the dragons could start an attack or a distraction so that the Jinn had his hands full at the time of the escape, he wouldn’t notice until his power began to ebb that they were missing, and by that point they would be long gone.

  He repressed the urge to pace. Pacing would make no difference in how this came out. If she elected not to help, they would just have to make some other plan.

  “Perhaps something a little stronger than tea, sir?” the attendant asked.

  He thought about that a moment. “That might be a good idea.”

  Without another word, a glass of vodka replaced the teacup, and Sasha downed it, feeling it burn all the way to his stomach, and light a fire there.

  Fire—

  If nothing else, now he had far more information on what a Jinn was than he’d had before. But fire and water…Katya was the Jinn’s “natural” enemy, and Sasha had the uneasy feeling that if it came to a need to consume one of the Jinn’s captives, she would be the first to go.

  He had to get her out of there.

  Had to.

  Even if he had to fight his way in there alone.

  * * *

  Katya was reasonably pleased with their progress. Half the rooms had been explored, and thoroughly. The Wili had uncovered a veritable second castle of secret passages.

  That much pleased her. The trouble was, still there was no sign of the bottle.

  Guiliette had, however, found one hidden way out. There was a tunnel leading out under the walls from one of the cellars full of old and broken furniture that came out in what had probably once been the other side of the lethal hedge-maze that had surrounded the Castle. But, the maze was gone, vanished, leaving behind only desert. There wasn’t a hint of cover out there; the Wili had cautiously investigated and come back to report that anyone using that exit would be quickly spotted by the Castle guards. No hope for it; unless something provided a powerful distraction, there would be no escaping that way.

  She wondered if there was any way the girls could hide in the walls. Would that make the Jinn go looking for them, and leave an opening for them to escape?

  But that would really accomplish nothing. As long as the girls were around the Jinn, he could leach their magic. That was probably why he allowed them to roam at will. As long as they were within the walls, he was going to be satisfied. It wouldn’t matter that he couldn’t see them, as long as he knew he had them.

  On the other hand, if he decided he needed to consume one—those secret passages might come in very handy. Even if he could find the passageways—which, eventually, he probably could—he wouldn’t know them the way the girls did.

  Of course, that supposed that he wouldn’t just blast a hole in the wall to get to the one he wanted….

  In the tales, solutions were always so much simpler.

  All right. She knew that Sasha was out there with the dragons. It was time to tell him what was going on. This time she found a real pen so that she could write as much detail as would fit on the inside of the bird. She told him how many girls there were, about the secret exit, that they were trying to find the Jinn’s bottle and why. She included everything they knew about the Jinn, which was, sadly, not much. When she was done, she had room for exactly one letter, and after much trepidation, she made a neat little heart.

  Then she let the bird fold itself up, and went in search of some of the other girls. She found Klava deep in conversation with the gypsy over a handful o
f herbs, in a small square tower room with a window overlooking what was now desert. The other half of the tower floor was dark, and she couldn’t see what lay in the room. This one was furnished with four chairs, a table, and chests lining the walls.

  They both looked up at her entrance.

  “We were discussing whether or not it is possible to poison a being of fire,” said the gypsy, without preamble. “Am thinking not, but is good to discuss anyway.”

  “I’m about to send the bird off again, and the Jinn will surely come looking for the source of the spell he senses when I do,” she replied. “Twice now he’s sensed it around me, and I think a third time—”

  Both the others nodded, and the gypsy grinned. “I give him something to think about, I think. You send bird, then hide—” She cast around, and pointed at a chest. “Is empty, yes?”

  Katya raised the lid. It was empty and big enough for two of her.

  “Klava, you getting ready to close lid on her. I start spell.” The gypsy took out a pack of cards and began to shuffle them. Katya stood in the chest, and whispered the words of the spell to the bird, thinking hard about Sasha. The bird shot out the window, she dropped down into the chest, Klava shut the lid on her, and she felt the Jinn approaching quickly from a distance. Within moments he was practically on top of her, as if he had flown in through the window. She knelt, all bent over, inside the chest, and hoped he would not think to look there. She would have a hard time explaining why she was hiding.

  Flickering light played through the cracks in the chest as the Jinn’s presence filled the room in a way she could feel even inside the chest. “I told you—” he roared.